February 04, 2026
Cancer is a silent disease.
It doesn’t always make noise when it arrives. Sometimes it settles in slowly, other times it invades suddenly.
But it almost always changes everything — even when no one knows yet.
World Cancer Day doesn’t ask me for speeches or statistics. It asks for presence. It asks for memory. It asks for truth.
There is a sense of astonishment that never leaves me: no one should have to live through this alone.
And yet, so many do.
One lives alone in the corridors, in the difficult decisions, in the long nights, in the questions that have no answers.
One lives alone because others don’t know what to say. Because they are afraid. Because silence feels safer than the wrong words.
But silence also makes us ill.
Today I know that cancer is not just a disease of the body.
It is an experience that passes through everything: time, home, relationships, the way we look at the future.
It is a disease that asks for more than treatments — it asks for real companionship.
Someone who stays. Without haste. Without formulas. Without running away.
This day reminds me of that.
Not as an institutional message, but as a human commitment: to be there.
To be there when there is no solution.
To be there when there is fear.
To be there when we don’t know what comes next.
Perhaps prevention saves lives.
Perhaps early diagnosis makes a difference.
But I am certain of one thing: no one should have to go through cancer — or what it brings — alone.
Today I write for that.
For presence. For care. For humanity.
By Carmen Cabral, The Door – Life Executive Assistant
February 04, 2026
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